From Bruce Aune, Knowledge, Mind, and Nature: An Introduction to Theory of Knowledge and the Philosophy of Mind (Random House: New York, 1967).

II Does Knowledge Have an Indubitable Foundation?

The position outlined at the end of the last chapter was built on the assumption that a man's sensory experience can provide a satisfactory foundation for the body of his empirical knowledge. Although
this assumption has been a key tenet of traditional empiricism, most contemporary
philosophers regard it as extremely questionable. In fact, it is now commonly
believed that subjective experience, taken by itself, cannot possibly provide an
adequate basis for any kind of knowledge at all. The main task of this chapter will be
to examine the credentials of this current opinion.

1. THE RELIABILITY OF INTROSPECTION

Anyone who thinks it possible to develop his conception of himself and an external world solely
by reference to his immediate experience is generally presupposing that the nature and
interrelations of his sensory experiences can be classified and known independently of anything
else. Although it will actually be shown only in later chapters that knowing and classifying
are essentially linguistic and require some kind of conceptual scheme, I shall here
assume that the presupposition can be expressed by the claim that one might
possibly possess a primitive phenomenal language. Such a language or conceptual
scheme may of course be used only in silent soliloquy. It will be considered primitive
in the sense that its basic use will be to classify the phenomena of immediate experience.

The point in expressing the above presupposition by reference to a language is to come
directly to terms with Wittgenstein's influential critique of private languages,1 which
is commonly regarded as ruling out the possibility of a subjective basis for empirical
knowledge. Since Wittgenstein's critique raises numerous questions of a highly controversial
sort, I shall develop it dialectically as the chapter proceeds. As an introduction to the
general strategy of his approach, the following remarks will be helpful.

If a man is to defend an assertion or proposition, he plainly needs some kind of argument. Arguments,
however, need premises. Hence if there is to be a fundamental basis of empirical knowledge - something
by which the truth of ordinary claims is to be defended - this basis must be propositional
in character: it must be the kind of thing that can have a place in an argument. This being so,
any adequate basis of knowledge will be radically different from raw experience. Pains, tickles, and
itches are neither true nor false, and they cannot appear as premises in arguments. If, accordingly,
the true basis of knowledge is regarded as phenomenal, it can at best consist of propositions
about immediate experiences. Since these propositions are presumed to be true, they must themselves
be capable of some kind of defense. If they cannot be defended, if no good reason can be given
for supposing them true, then their claim to provide a secure basis of knowledge can be nothing but
a sham.

Although traditional empiricists have notoriously regarded the truth of basic phenomenal
premises as far too obvious to require explicit defense, this is exactly what Wittgenstein
demanded. If the very foundation of our knowledge is to rest on truths about our sense
experiences, then, considering the enormous stakes involved, we must surely have some
guarantee that our knowledge does not rest on sand. We may indeed have no haunting doubts
about the reliability of our beliefs concerning our immediate experiences, but this does not
allow us, as philosophers, to assume
without question that all such doubts are strictly unjustifiable, that they must be mad
or wild. Admittedly, it is exceedingly difficult to imagine that we might chronically misidentify
our own experiences. But this is merely a psychological matter: some people cannot imagine
a lifeless universe. It will be of no use here to appeal to intuition, since the intuitions
of one man may easily conflict with those of another. What is needed, plainly, is an argument,
something showing just why the products of our awareness may justifiably be held reliable.
Unfortunately, nothing but the flabbiest arguments have ever been given in defense of this basic
empiricist idea. Empiricists have for the most part simply taken it for granted that our
knowledge of our sense experiences is both noninferential and absolutely reliable.
Yet taking things for granted is the mark of the dogmatist - not the free, critical spirit
that the empiricist has taken himself to be.

Contrary to what one might expect, it happens that good reasons can actually be given for doubting
the allegedly infallible character of immediate awareness, though these reasons were not advanced
by Wittgenstein. Consider, first, the verbal behavior of hebephrenic schizophrenics. These people
frequently utter what are graphically called "word salads"; they pour out chaotic jumbles of words,
which often appear to be utterly unrelated. Verbally, at least, these people are totally confused.
Is there any reason to think that their thoughts are less chaotic than their words?
Evidently not.
In fact even psychoanalysis would have to admit that, consciously at least, such patients are totally
confused: their conscious thinking, if indeed it merits the name of thinking, seems to be every bit as
flightful and disconnected as the words they utter. Yet if these patients really are intellectually
deranged, thoroughly befuddled, there is obviously good reason to think that this derangement
also extends to their awareness of their feelings.

It might be objected at this point that the kind of intellectual befuddlement just mentioned can
occur only in psychotics, never in an ordinary perceiver. This may be granted, though it would
appear that less dramatic forms of intellectual befuddlement could occasionally exist in almost
anybody. The philosophically important fact has, nevertheless, been established. It is simply
that serious intellectual confusion is a possibility, and that identifications of even feelings
and mental images are not logically incapable of error. 1
myself have no reason, of course, to think that I am as befuddled as a hospitalized schizophrenic,
and my confidence in the truth of what I say about my feelings is extremely high. But this
confidence is something that requires some kind of justification; it cannot stand by itself
as the basis of all my knowledge. If I cannot justify my conviction that I am not
a walking whirly of confusion, I plainly cannot justify the idea that I have any knowledge
at all, let alone a substantial stock of infallible knowledge about my momentary state of mind.

Actually the possibility of being mistaken about the character of one's momentary experience can
be illustrated by reference to the behavior of perfectly sane adults. Consider, for instance, the
following experiment.2 We have a man, noted for his integrity, who reports having
extremely vivid imagery. His imagery is so vivid, he tells us, that he can generally read off from it
all sorts of facts about objects he has recently seen. We present him with the following
letter-square, and let him scrutinize it for a few seconds:

e m f
r z a
o w p

We then take the square away and ask him whether he has a clear image of it. He says that he does.
We then ask him to read off the letters from left to right, starting from the top and working down.
He does so, and makes no mistakes. We then ask him to read them off in the opposite
direction. Suppose that, contrary to his likely behavior,3 he reads them off without
hesitation, though he makes several mistakes. We have him do the same thing again - that is,
read off the letters in both directions - and he gives the same answers. Without mentioning
his error, we then ask him whether his image changed during the experiment. He says, "No; it
remained the same throughout the experiment, vivid and sharp." In fact, he emphatically endorses
all of the following claims, not even considering, so great is his confidence, that they might
not be entirely consistent.

1. The image did not change during the experiment.
2. From left to right, top to bottom, the letters were: e, m, f, r, z, a, o, w, p.
3. From right to left, bottom to top, the letters were: p, w, o, r, a, s, f, m, e.
(He was evidently wrong about the italicized letters.)

Now, if he has the image he claims to have, not all three of these assertions can be true of it;
at least one must be mistaken. Whichever it is, we know that he has made a mistake about the
character of his experience. Presented with this example, about the only thing the traditional
empiricist can say, apart from questioning the honesty of the subject (which we have implicitly ruled
out), is that the man's memory, as anyone will admit, is by no means infallible. We could, however,
vary the experiment indefinitely, using either a very small square or even just a short sequence
of letters. If we have more than one letter, error will always be theoretically possible: the
statements the agent will make could always turn out to be inconsistent. To blame the error
in every case on the weakness of memory seems ad hoc and theoretically desperate.
Besides, what experimental sense could we give to the assertion that it is always memory that is at
fault?

The admission that memory is intrinsically fallible is, however, extremely damaging to the idea
that phenomenal identification could not possibly go wrong. There is plainly a sense in which
memory is involved in all judgments of identification. To judge that a phenomenal occurrence has
the property F is to assert that it belongs to the class of F's. But how could
one know this infallibly, if one's memory is intrinsically fallible? - if one may well misremember
the peculiarities, the distinguishing features, of F's generally? If it is replied that
every assertion of the form "This is an F" is really an immediate matter, involving no
reference whatever to other F's or to their distinguishing features, then the assertion
evidentaly amounts to no more than "I shall call this 'F'." But if all phenomenal identification
have this import, and only this import, then it would be impossible to establish any generalization,
let alone infallible ones, relating different phenomenal items. Indeed, there would be no
bona fide identifications at all; each so-called identification would turn out to be nothing
more than a kind of ceremonial announcement or verbal baptism, something very different from
an out-and-out claim to knowledge.

In view of this it appears that anyone wanting to regard all phenomenal identification as
invariably true is forced to admit that memories, too, are sometimes infallible. If so,
he must advance criteria to distinguish fallible from infallible memories, for he must be able
to handle the puzzle raised by the example of the letter-square. It happens, however, that
no such criteria have ever been advanced - and it is extremely difficult to imagine what
such criteria would be like. Yet until we have such criteria, the conclusion to be drawn
from the case of the letter-square seems inescapable, namely, that it is quite possible
for even a sane man to make mistakes about the character of his immediate experience.

The temptation to regard sense experience as yielding infallible knowledge seems to arise
from the historic confusion of knowledge with a kind of intellectual gazing: a sense
impression has nothing hidden about it, nothing not presented to the eye of the soul,
so it involves nothing about which one could be mistaken. But it is easy to see, again by considering
examples familiar to psychologists, that knowledge which is a matter of having true, defensible
opinions, is extremely different from intellectual gazing - and not just on the ground that there
really is no eye of the soul. Consider, for instance, some of the experiments performed on
congenitally blind adults whose vision has been restored by surgery. While these people learn
to discriminate colors rather quickly, they often have an extremely difficult time with
visual shapes. Senden found, for instance, that patients trained over a period of thirteen days
to discriminate squares from triangles sometimes learned so little that they could not make
these discriminations without methodically counting corners one after another.4
In fact some of these patients were quite unable visually to distinguish spheres from cubes!
Though the shapes in point were physical ones, an empiricist could scarcely deny that the
patients had the appropriate visual impressions. Yet if they were familiar with the idea of a
sense impression, and were asked whether their current impressions were of spherical or cubical
objects, they would no doubt have had to reply that they could not tell. If so, we could have
had the spectacle of men intellectually wallowing in their immediate experience who nevertheless lacked
the ability to appreciate the complex variety of what they were actually sensing.

The point here, though troublesome to traditional empiricists,
is actually well known in the history of philosophy. And if, like Plato,
Kant, and others, we make the indispensible distinction between having an impression or
experience and thinking about it, attempting to classify it, and the like, we should
find it very natural to admit the possibility that persons whose vision has been restored
by medical treatment may very well be unable to make accurate discriminations among the visual
impressions that are novel to them. Indeed, the spectacle just mentioned, of men having sensory
experiences they cannot distinguish or identify, is nothing but memorable illustration of the
Kantian point that percepts without concepts are blind.

In spite of all this I am fully prepared to admit that given sufficient training, it is extremely
unlikely that a normal person could fail to distinguish surfaces so palpably different
as circles and squares. But this concession is of little help to the traditional empiricist. The
point seems to be securely established that judgments of phenomenal identification are not, in fact,
infallible. We may come to have enormous confidence that, after a protracted period of training,
a man's opinions about the character of his own experiences are never really wrong. But our confidence
here is based on empirical considerations. There is no longer any reason to think that such opinions
cannot be erroneous; rather, we have fairly good, though not fallible, reasons to think
that they are normally reliable. But these reasons are neither wholly phenomenal, derived from
introspection, nor purely logical, semantical, or a priori in some other subtle way.

There is, of course, a familiar defensive move that empiricists are generally anxious to make at
this point. They often contend that error here implies misunderstanding of the language in which
the identifications are made, so that if a man is not linguistically or perhaps conceptually
befuddled in some way, what he says or thinks about his immediate experience is always true.
Unfortunately, though there is often point to this contention, it is wholly useless in the
present context. When introduced here, it simply redirects the challenge in question, allowing
it to be focused on the matter of whether a man's confidence that he actually understands what he
is saying is ever justified. Linguistic or conceptual befuddlement is, after all, just as
serious an intellectual defect as out-and-out error, for confusion and error are both cases of
ignorance,
which is failure to appreciate the truth. It may well be a necessary truth that if
one is not conceptually befuddled, one's judgments of phenomenal identification are always
true. But because of the possibility of improper coordination between thought and sensation,
illustrated by the above experiments, this alleged necessity does not support the traditional
contention that immediate apprehension is an infallible source of knowledge.

The foregoing discussion illustrates the position I shall take in this book: subjective
experiences, or introspective knowledge of them, are not sufficient to constitute the foundation
of anything, let alone all our empirical knowledge. This is not to say, however, that introspective
knowledge is an illusion; in fact, I shall take special pains to defend the legitimacy of such
knowledge against its behavioristic critics. The defense I give will nevertheless be far out of line
with the contentions of traditional empiricism. Not only shall I insist that subjective experience
cannot provide the true foundation of our knowledge, but I shall insist that our knowledge
has no foundations in the traditional sense. By this I do not mean that it is unfounded
or baseless, in the sense that it is subject to every shift in the uncertain winds of custom or
fancy. I simply mean that there is no such thing as an indubitable foundation on which knowledge
of any sort can rest.

2. WITTGENSTEIN'S ATTACK

Although Wittgenstein's attack on a subjective basis for empirical knowledge is presumably
consistent with the main lines of my argument against the infallibility of introspective
claims, it involves further, more serious criticism; in fact some philosophers see it as
constituting a critique of introspective knowledge generally.5 The fundamental
point of the critique seems to be this. Anyone restricted merely to the domain of private
experience has no possible way of checking up on, or even adding credibility to, his
momentary apprehensions about his immediate experiences. Such a person could not, in fact,
distinguish between knowing that an experience has, say, the property F
and merely thinking of being or being under the impression that it has F. But if he could not
make this distinction, and so justify the truth of his introspective claims, the very idea of
introspective knowledge turns to dust and has, consequently, no significant place in serious
epistemological deliberation.

In view of the far-reaching, indeed revolutionary, consequences of this contention, it is
obviously important to scrutinize its credentials with exceptional care. As just presented,
Wittgenstein's argument seems to rest heavily on the necessity of making a clear
distinction between knowing that one has a certain experience and merely thinking that one
has it.6 But this distinction is actually not of crucial importance. The
contradictory of "He knows that p" is "He does not know that p"; and if one can make
sense of the latter, one can give sense to the former, even if, for some reason, "He merely
thinks that p" remains unintelligible. [The importance of this reservation to Wittgenstein's argument is brought out in Ch. IV; see esp. pp. 95-98.]
Assuming that Wittgenstein was correct
in insisting on the necessity of finding some kind of significant contrast for the claim
that a man knows he has a certain experience, we may thus regard this contrast as adequately
given by the claim that the man does not not possess this knowledge.

An obvious first step in coming to terms with Wittgenstein's evident attack on the possibility
of basic introspective knowledge is to ask how, in his opinion, one is ever
able to distinguish knowledge from ignorance. His general answer to this question, if I
understand him correctly, is that an assertion may be regarded as an expression of knowledge
only if it is made in accordance with some appropriate rule, one by which the propriety of
of applying the relevant words or concepts is to be appraised.7 If this is indeed
his opinion, it appears that if the empiricist of the last chapter can show that his application
of phenomenal term or concept is in accordance with some appropriate rule, then his contention
that he actually does possess basic introspective knowledge stands a good chance of being
justified even according to Wittgenstein's principles.

3. KNOWLEDGE, RULES, AND DUBITABILITY

If we are to make sense of the kind of knowledge in question by reference to rules,
we must be clear about the kind of rule involved. Wittgenstein, unfortunately, was
not entirely explicit about this.
Yet if we consider his general assumption that the use of a word is governed by "criteria,"
which are in some sense based on the word's definition, a natural interpretation of his doctrine
is not difficult to formulate.8 Although his use of the term "criterion" is
not without its puzzles,9 we can surely agree that the question whether a thing is
correctly described as, say, a "lemon" would normally be answered by at least a tacit
or indirect reference to the defining characteristics of lemons - and Wittgenstein would
presumably call these characteristics "criteria." Thus, if I am assured that the term
"lemon" properly applies to yellow, sour fruit of a certain characteristic size and shape,
I can justify my use of this term to describe or identify something by showing that
the thing in point possesses these defining characteristics. In doing so, I may be said
to be relying on a rule, one to the effect, roughly, that fruit of such and such
characteristics are correctly called "lemons." The general connection between
knowledge and rules suggested by this example is that one can ultimately determine
whether a thing actually is a K - whether the word "K" properly applies to it - only by
reference to rules that specify the criteria for being a K. [I am only using the word "criterion" in an informal sense, which is slightly different from the technical sense I introduce in Ch. V, pp. 114f.]

It is crucially important to note that the rules involved here strictly authorize
what might be called "intra-language" moves.10
This label highlights the special character of these rules, which is to authorize inferences.
Thus, to continue with the same example, if one knows or has good reason to think that
a thing is yellow, sour, of the appropriate size and shape, then the rule in point allows
one to infer that the object is a lemon. And if, conversely, one knows that it is a
lemon, then the rule probably allows one to infer that it is probably
yellow, sour, and the like.11 (The
utility of this latter rule is that it tells one what to expect when lemons are said
to be in the vicinity.)

The idea that the rules with reference to which empirical claims are justified are all
of this intra-language sort immediately leads to a very serious problem. In order to
justify a claim by an intra-language rule one has to know that some other claim is justifiable,
the claim, namely, that serves as the premise for the inference. Yet if this latter claim
can be justified only by a rule of inference, one must know that still another claim is justifiable, and so on without end.
This, however, seems to make it impossible to justify anything. To put it in another way, since
intra-language rules merely authorize inferences, they cannot themselves justify any basic
premises. Yet without such premises, we could never obtain justified conclusions; and without
justified conclusions we could never have knowledge of the actual character of the world.

This kind of puzzle takes us immediately to the basis of traditional empiricism and partially
accounts for the tenacity of the idea that empirical knowledge must be built on a phenomenal
foundation. It is precisely phenomenal awareness, whose infallibility is so difficult to doubt
that is supposed to justify the basic premises of empirical knowledge. One justifiably
makes these basic claims as the result of one's awareness of a certain experience - an occurrence
or datum which, unlike physical things, is entirely open to view. Once these primitive claims
are made, rules of inference allow one to move on and construct a warranted picture of the world.

Although I have already advanced arguments against the idea that immediate experience provides an
indubitable basis of knowledge, the assumption that knowledge requires some such basis
is still very much alive. Since this assumption seems to rule out the plausibility
of Wittgenstein's general approach by sustaining the problem mentioned above, a brief resolution
of that problem must be attempted before proceeding any further with Wittgenstein's argument.
I shall attempt to do this by showing that the assumption in point is untenable and that the problem
it poses for Wittgenstein's approach is actually misconceived.

The line of reasoning behind the empiricist's assumption is, again, that while intra-language
rules may validly take us from premise to conclusion, they cannot themselves establish
empirical truth. If the premises you start with are false, you will have no guarantee that the
conclusions you reach are not false either. Hence, to attain knowledge of the actual world, you must
ultimately have premises whose truth is acceptable independently of any inference and whose
status is accordingly indubitable. Only by having such premises can you gain a starting
point that would make inference worthwhile. For convenience, these indispensable basic
premises may be called "intrinsically acceptable." The possibility of empirical knowledge may then be said to depend on the availability of intrinsically acceptable
premises.

If this line of thought is sound, it follows that utter skepticism can be ruled out only if
one can locate
basic empirical premises that are intrinsically acceptable. Although philosophers who attack
skepticism in accordance with this appraoch generally think they are defending common sense, it is
crucial to observe that they cannot actually be doing so. The reason for this is that, from
the pont of view of common experience, there is no plausibility at all in the idea that
intrinsically acceptable premises, as so defined, ever exist. Philosophers defending such
premises fail to see this because they always ignore the complexity of the situation in which
an empirical claim is evaluated.

I have already given arguments to show that introspective claims are not, in themselves,
intrinsically infallible, they may be regarded as virtually certain if produced by a reliable
(sane, clear-headed) observer, but their truth is not a consequence of the mere fact that they are
confidently made. [Some philosophers argue that the truth of certain statements is a consequence
of the fact that they are made with maximum understanding. I attacked this argument briefly
on p. 37, and I shall attack it in detail in Ch. IV, esp. pp. 102-105.]
To establish a similar conclusion regarding the observation
claim of everday life only the sketchiest arguments are needed. Obviously, the mere fact that such a
claim is made does not assure us of its truth. If we know that the observer is reliable,
made his observation in good light, was reasonably close to the object, and so on, then we may
immediately regard it as acceptable. But its acceptability is not intrinsic to the claim itself.
Thus, philosophers who, like G. E. Moore,12 attempt to prove by direct inspection
that they have hands do not proceed just by taking a quick look at their hands; they
rather turn them over, look at both sides, pinch them, and the like. The certainty they arrive
at is thus based on a whole group of observations, as well as on numerous tacit assumptions
concerning the general reliability of their senses, the accuracy of their memories, the sort
of things hands are supposed to be, and so on. I would venture to say that any spontaneous
claim, observational or introspective, carries almost no presumption
of truth when considered entirely by itself. If we accept such a claim as true, it is only
because of our confidence that a complex
body of background assumptions - concerning observers, standing conditions, the kind of
object in question - and, often, a complex mass of further observations all point to the
conclusion that it is true.

Given these prosaic considerations, it is not necessary to cite experimental evidence
illustrating the delusions easily brought about by, for example, hypnosis to see that no
spontaneous claim is acceptable wholly on its own merits.13 On the contrary, common
experience is entirely adequate to show that clear-headed men never accept a claim merely because
it is made, without regard to the peculiarities of the agent and of the conditions under which
it is produced. For such men the acceptability of every claim is always determined by
inference. [To say this is not to imply that one always does infer, or actually come to a reasoned
conclusion, that a given observation claim is acceptable. It is rather to say that
the acceptability of such a claim is to be justified by inference; that its acceptability
is not intrinsic to it. This is entirely compatible with the obvious fact that human beings
constantly accept claims as true without thinking about them at all.] If we are prepared to take these standards of acceptability
seriously, we must accordingly admit that the traditional search for intrinsically acceptable
empirical premises is completely misguided.

To rule out intrinsically acceptable claims on the grounds of common experience is to presuppose
two things: first, that common experience can somehow provide an acceptable basis
for knowledge and, second, that utter skepticism is untenable. If these presuppositions
can be defended, it will therefore follow that the argument purporting to establish the
need for intrinsically acceptable empirical claims must contain some crucial flaw. Although I
shall attempt a justification of these presuppositions only in later chapters, [See esp. Ch. V, pp. 123-126, and Ch. VI, p. 137, footnote.]
I can say now that the basic flaw in the empiricist's argument arises from a grossly
oversimplified conception of the structure of empirical reasoning. In assuming that we must
have unalterable and incontestable truth in order to infer something on which we can reasonably
depend, it overlooks the important fact that successful empirical reasoning can proceed only against
a background of general assumptions (many of them empirical [As indicated above, some of these assumptions will concern the reliability of the observer (whoever he is), the character of the standing conditions, and so on. For further discussion of this, see Ch. V, pp. 123-126.] ) in terms which
we interpret our experience and assess the truth of what we say about it. The empiricist's
basic error is thus his presumption that we could actually start out with a fistful
of merely inferential rules and then, as innocent of the world as the youngest child,
cast about for some self-justifying premise that will permit us to draw an inference. The error
of this presumption is patent, because even though a premise may come to mind that is actually
certain, we must have good reason to believe it is certain if we are to use it in
an inference. Even if it were to bring with it the strongest feeling of confidence, or even
wear a little lapel saying "I am true," we would plainly require some rational means of
deciding whether the confidence or the label can be safely trusted.

It is granted that no empirical claim is stictly justifiable on its own merits but requires
some kind of support from a body of other claims, we may accordingly infer that Wittgenstein's
conception of knowledge as something requiring justification by reference to rules is not basically
unacceptable. In fact, we may note that his insistence on the necessity for rules in this
connection brings out the important fact that both confirmation and disconfirmation (or proof
and disproof) involve relations between claims, between statements and propositions. To show that
a statement is false, you have to establish some other claim with which the first one is
inconsistent, and to show that a statement is true, or probably true, you have to show that it is
rendered so by certain statements that formulate the relevant evidence. The basic
point here is that confirmation and disconfirmation are logical relations; and such
relations hold between terms belonging to the conceptual, rather than the natural, order.

Once it is seen that there are no intrinsically acceptable empirical claims and that confirmation as
well as disconfirmation can be rendered only by other claims that also lack intrinsic acceptability,
it becomes apparent that the process of firmly establishing an empirical claim can be, in principle,
almost endless. Suppose, for instance, that I happen to be in some doubt as to whether
the fruit I am holding is actually a lemon. In order to remove this doubt and confirm my
tentative belief, I might appeal to my neighbors. If they agree that it is a lemon,
and if I have no reason to doubt the honesty of their testimony, then I would ordinarily
be considered justified in taking it to be a lemon. But I might, of course, be mistaken in
trusting them. Should I later become aware of this mistake, I might consult still other persons,
or perhaps do some research in a library. What I learn from these sources would normally settle
my doubt, but it need not insure the truth of my belief. In fact, if I began to suspect
that I had recently been hypnotized, and told to misinterpret any direct evidence bearing
on the kind of fruit I am carrying, I might fall into an utter quandry. [In the paper referred to in note 13 of this chapter, an actual case of such
a quandry was demonstrated experimentally. A man had been given a post-hypnotic suggestion
that, after writing on some sheets of paper before him, he would forget having written on them
and be unable to see that they were written on at all. During the experiment, he was subjected
to close examination regarding what was written on the papers and, when his denial
that anything was written on them met with constant objection by his interlocutors, he became
both angry and confused, showing all the signs of a man whose perception of an obvious matter
of fact meets with universal disbelief. A case of this sort should carefully be kept
in mind by any philosopher who thinks that obvious matters of fact are always easy to settle.]
To work my way out of this quandry I could appeal to other considerations and make further
tests. This kind of appeal could, however, go on indefinitely, with a theoretical
possibility of mistake at every turn. It is, of course, granted that in most cases I would
not have to make such appeals in order to establish my claim beyond any reasonable
doubt. But the important fact remains that the confidence I attain need never be logically
immune to a rational challenge.

4. A REJOINDER TO WITTGENSTEIN

Assuming that the sort of rule to which Wittgenstein requires one to appeal for purposes
of justifying an empirical claim is of the intra-language sort so far discussed, we may now consider
whether a defender of phenomenal languages could possibly establish his claims to knowledge.
In view of the foregoing discussion, we may pose our question as follows: "Could such a
thinker justify a basic phenomenal claim, 'This is an A,' by relating it to some intra-language
rule that he possesses?" The answer to this particular question seems to be "Yes."14 In
order to justify his claim he might have recourse to a rule that relates the expression "A"
to another expression "B." He could then argue that he knows that the item is an A because it is also
a B and because it is a rule of his language that anything that is a B may properly be called
"an A." Admittedly, the
question whether it is indeed a B can also arise, and this question would have to be settled
by further appeals. But the possibility of such constant queries and appeals is not
peculiar to phenomenal language. As already indicated, it holds generally. To assume
otherwise is simply to accept the immediately infallible in another form, and in so doing
to reject the spirit of Wittgenstein's attack.

In might be thought that I am simply begging the question here by assuming that the
phenomenal thinker may indeed have rules. How, for instance, is he to distinguish between
his actually having rules and his merely thinking that he has them? The question may,
however, be attacked in all sorts of ways. For one thing, the thinker may employ
a variation on Wittgenstein's own "This language game is played" theme, 15
arguing that he is fully confident that his language-game is under way, that he has
absolutely no reason, concrete or otherwise, to think that he is not employing
rules, and that he cannot, in point of fact, even conceive the possibility that he is
operating with rules, since conceiving such a thing would require him to have them already.
(He could not, therefore, "merely think" that he has rules; for thinking this, rather than
that, is a rule governed activity, which may involve inconsistency and error.)
Another approach to the question would be to declare that it is fundamentally misconceived.
The thinker might, that is, reject the whole question, arguing that one's linguistic
rules are not the sort of thing whose existence one must prove (such a proof would
reequire rules anyway) but something one simply uses. Rules are not factual contentions,
and to accept a rule is to adopt a procedure - a specific way of thinking, or organizing
one's ideas. If the thinker actually has rules, his use of them will be shown
by the inferences he draws concerning the character of his phenomenal data. If he
draws inferences at all, he is thereby operating with rules, whether he is articulate in
formulating them or not.

5. WITTGENSTEIN'S CHALLENGE AND ANOTHER KIND OF RULE

So far, I have taken the term "rule" in a fairly strict sense; I have regarded
linguistic rules as the sort of thing that may justify an inference. There is, however,
another sense of "rule" lurking in
Wittgenstein's discussion. This sense concerns linguistic regularity, and it is brought
into the picture as soon as it is asked whether a particular inference is regularly
drawn from the same type of premise. This sense of the word "rule" is nothing like what has
been called the "regulation" sense16 for it is essentially descriptive
and cannot itself justify an inference or establish some claim. It is nevertheless of central
importance to the issue of phenomenal languages, since the empiricist who wants to defend
the legitimacy of such languages must be assured that he is at least consistent in the use of
his phenomenal terms.

Such "rules" can exist, then, only when there is a certain linguistic practice. The question
is, Could a solitary thinker have a consistent practice of applying his phenomenal terms?
Although one would think that the answer to this is an obvious "Yes" - that the
interesting question is not whether he can be consistent but whether he can defend
his conviction that he is consistent - it is perhaps wise to consider two general lines of
argument that might be urged against the very meaninglessness of the contention that a practice
of this kind might exist, let alone be known to exist by the agent involved. The first objection
concerns the meaning of the word "same" in the context of "applying a concept to the same
phenomenal terms," and the second concerns the identity of the thinker who is supposed to use
a phenomenal language.

Beginning with the first objection, we might ask what the word "same" is supposed to mean
in a special phenomenal language. This term plainly belongs to ordinary English, and when
it is applied to purely phenomenal objects, where familiar criteria are not involved, it
appears to lose whatever sense it had. Yet if it does lose its familiar sense in this new
context, it is obviously misused: for it is employed as though it had its usual sense - in fact,
it is used in this context just because it has a very familiar but crucial job to perform. If
it had utterly different meaning as used here, it would prevent the present issue from
even being formulated.

Actually, this kind of objection concerning the meaning of "sameness in kind" - for that is
what is presently involved - is not so troublesome to the phenomenal theorist in this context
as it appears to be elsewhere. [Its importance in another context is discussed in Ch. III, sect. 2.] As used here, the expression has a purely formal
significance, which is quite independent of any specific subject matter. Thus, the theorist
can easily advance the following definitions:

"a and b are the same kind of thing" means "there is a kind of thing, A,
of which both a and b are instances."

Since this definition is wholly general, mentioning no specific kind of thing, the peculiarities
of a phenomenal subject-matter are logically immaterial to the meaning of "the same" as it
appears here. Whether one is speaking of furniture, phenomenal data, or even sporting events, the
expression "the same" as so defined retains precisely the same meaning.

Given, however, that "the same" has a purely formal significance, there is still the question
of how the sameness of two or more things is to be determined. The answer to this immediately
brings us back to the ancient puzzle about the relation between words and the world. Are a
and b both lemons? Are they both instances of Lemonkind? Well, do they both satisfy the
criteria for being lemons? Are they perhaps yellow, sour, of ovoid shape? As already indicated,
to answer these questions is to establish the truth of other factual contentions, which may
require justification as well. Questions of this kind can no doubt be answered to the satisfaction
of a reasonable man, but the answers given will by no means be immune to critical examination.

Similar considerations naturally apply to the contentions of the silent thinker. If he is to
justify his contention that two phenomenal items are the same in kind - both instances, that is, of
some kind-concept - he need only appeal to certain other contentions, about which he is reasonably
confident. There is simply no way of getting outside all conceptual schemes in order to see
whether one's concepts are consistently and accurately applied to reality. Tests for semantic
regularities must necessarily be carried out within the framework of some conceptual scheme,
and the question whether a thoroughly intersubjective framework is consistently applied can
be raised in just the embarrassing way that it is raised in connection with phenomenal
languages - given, that is, that questions of this
type are legitimate ones. The silent thinker cannot, it is true, assuage such doubts by
appeal to the testimony of other persons. But a wide variety of appeals is still open to him,
at least as regards any particular doubts he might have; and even if he could make an appeal to
other persons, this would do nothing to settle any general doubt he might have concerning
the consistent application of his language as a whole, for he would have to interpret their
testimony within the framework of the scheme he happens to have.

Assuming, then, that a defender of phenomenal languages faces no greater obstacle in making
sense of "same in kind" than anyone else, we have to consider the other line of objection mentioned
above: Just who, or what, is this thinker that is supposed to have the solitary practice of
applying phenomenal terms? The answer to this has already been given: the thinker in question is
the X that has the phenomenal items in point, the person who, according to the empiricist
reconstruction of the last chapter, has a certain body, a certain position in the world, and so
on (see pp. 25-29). Of course, this answer cannot be given by the thinker himself at this stage
of his deliberations. As already explained, his conception of his self is something he will
proceed to construct on the basis of an ascertained "coherence" among a certain field of phenomenal
items. It is not, therefore, binding on him to identify and describe himself at this stage of
his argument. He will attempt to do this later on, when his phenomenal language is enriched
by what are for him theoretical notions. At the present stage, he could conceive the general
question regarding semantic regularities only along lines similar to this: "Might certain
thoughts or conceptual episodes, such as 'This is a K' or 'The item that is a G is also a K,'
consistently occur in connection with, and only with, K-kind phenomenal items?" If he can
answer this question in the affirmative, and if, after forming his conception of his self, he can
show that these regularities are simply manifestations of his practice, then the
objection in point could evidently be met.

But an argument can be quickly advanced against this procedure, too. Just what admittedly
subjectless thoughts and phenomena are supposed to be involved here? Since the answer "Mine!"
cannot possibly be given at this stage, must the class not include any phenomena whatsoever?
Yet if it does so - if it includes even those which, if the thinker's language were fully
developed, he would ascribe to
other persons - then the existence of the appropriate regularities could never possibly be
established without reference to nonphenomenal considerations, a reference that is
explicitly excluded from the present context.

A defender of the traditional theory of awareness would naturally be tempted to reply to this
question by contending that the phenomena in point are simply the objects of direct
awareness. But this reply would obviously misfire in the present connection, and not just for
the reason that no reference to the subject of awareness is presently allowable. The main difficulty
is rather that an appeal to "awareness" solves nothing whatever. Any identification
must be made within the framework of some conceptual system, not outside such a system by
conceptually neutral act of direct awareness. [The limitations of direct awareness will be further explored in Ch. III, sect. 4, where the doctrine of "logically proper names" is discussed.]

It is possible, however, for the thinker to approach this question in a way that ought,
by now, to be familiar. He need only ask: "How are identifications ever made? How is a domain
of objects ever identified and circumscribed?" The answer to this, plainly, is
that they are described in some way; they are picked out as the things falling under certain
concepts. But if the private thinker has, as he claims, a phenomenal language including
such terms as "K-kind," "A," and "B," then he would have no trouble specifying the objects in
question: they are simply the things falling under these terms or their corresponding concepts. It
is surely not binding on him to specify these objects in some language different from his own;
and although we, who do not understand his language, will not know just what things he is
talking about when he uses such terms as "K-kind," it does not follow from this that they are
really meaningless, or really not terms at all.

All of this may sound very naive to a philosopher immersed in the intricacies of contemporary
semantical theory. Such a philosopher might immediately wish to reply: "If we are serious
in setting out an interpretation of a given language structure by specifying a domain of
objects to which its various terms refer, we shall have to proceed in what is strictly a
metalanguage.17 When we do this, we can then formulate semantical rules by which
to determine the application of expressions in the object language. We will not therefore be
limited to saying that a domain of objects is simply the class
of things falling under certain concepts; we can rather identify the domain independently
of these concepts by using the expression of the metalanguage. Thus, if we were using English
as a metalanguage in order to outline the semantics of French, we might say that 'les chiens'
denotes the class of dogs. It would then be by reference to this rule that we could determine
whether a given Frenchman consistently applies 'chien' to the right things."

Although this argument is very familiar, it is clearly useless. Even if we actually
had a hierarchy of metalanguages in which to specify the objects referred to by the terms
of each sublanguage, we would still have to have one language the semantics of which is just
"understood." It would be understood, moreover, without the aid of semantical rules.
And if this understanding is not really understanding, if we could not strictly
understand what we are talking about when we use this language, then, since each sublanguage
can be ultimately understood only in terms of this one - the semantics of the first sublanguage
being expressed in it, and so on down to the lowest level - we could not really understand
any language at all. Hence, if the reference of words is ever to be understood, it must
be possible to understand it without the apparatus of semantical rules.

Another difficulty with the semanticist's argument is that when we are concerned with natural
languages, we are not free to lay down just any semantical rules; we must rather be
able to justify every such rule that we advance. Yet when we consider how this
justification is to be given, we see at once that knowledge of the reference of a term must be in
hand before we are in a position to advance the appropriate semantical rule. Suppose, for
instance, that we are concerned to justify the rule concerning "les chiens
given in the last paragraph. How might we proceed? Surely by showing that the French expression
applies to just those things, actual and possible, that we call "dogs." We have to consider
possibilities as well as actualities because not all of the things to which an expression
may legitimately apply need actually exist. To make a well-worn example, if there were no
plucked chickens, the animals to which "featherless bipeds" might actually apply would
be restricted to human beings, though the expression could also apply to a plucked bird should one
exist. Because possible as well as actual applications of a given expression must be considered
in establishing
its distinctive reference, it becomes that in order to be fully justified in advancing
the semantical rule concerning "les chiens" we must have some access to the criteria
on the basis of which Frenchmen determine whether something describable in a certain
way is or is not un chien. What we have to determine, in fact, is whether
the things that are dogs, according to our criteria, are the same as the things that are
chiens, according to the criteria of Frenchmen. And to determine this, we would
have to be able to establish the extension of "les chiens without reference to the
English language.

The basic point here, to which even the private thinker can appeal, is simply this: a kind
of thing, such as Chien, Dog, or K, is definable only within some conceptual
scheme or other, and it is only by reference to the criteria involved in the appropriate
scheme that the decision whether a given thing belongs to a certain kind can possibly be reached.
(Of course, once these criteria are ascertained, we may express them in other languages and so
state semantical rules of the sort just considered.) The question, then, whether a given thing belongs
to the domain of objects about which the silent thinker's phenomenal idiom allows him to speak,
can properly be said to be answerable according to the criteria he happens to have, not to the
criteria appropriate to some other conceptual scheme, whether public or not. [Since the silent thinker's domain of discourse is initially restricted to phenomenal items and does not allow him to speak of conscious agents, his linguistic rules can initially be formulated only as modal conditionals or equivalences: for example, "A's are necessarily
B's."]

6. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF OSTENSIVE DEFINITION

It might naturally be objected at this point that I have badly underestimated the importance
of ostensive definition. If our language is actually to be applied to reality, it must
surely be possible to indicate the reference of our basic descriptive terms by pointing out,
grasping, or sometimes even manipulating, instances of the things to which they apply. This
pointing, grasping, or manipulating is more primitive than language, does not require the
apparatus of a conceptual scheme,18 and is therefore a logically fundamental means
of indicating which objects are denoted by various basic terms. Since this pointing, grasping,
and so on cannot be utilized by a private thinker, he labors under an irremedial handicap, and it is
exactly this handicap that renders his theoretical labors futile.

Familiar as this argument is, it is not difficult to see that it cannot possibly succeed. Collingwood
pointed out years ago19 that a gesture of the kind in question is a
linguistic act itself, whose reference is in no way more obvious than that of audible speech.
When a man points, one must not just look at his finger, as dogs naturally do; one must
look away from his finger, and then try to decide what he is attempting to draw one's
attention to. Doing even this requires considerable sophistication, but it takes far more to
appreciate
the particular intent of the man's gesture, which must be understood if his so called
ostensive definition is going to succeed. The foregoing discussion has proved, however,
that this intent - which is to indicate that the object of the gesture is an example of something
or other - could never be entirely given by a group of actual gestures, no matter how many
might be made. The reason for this is that the meaning or denotation of a term can be determined only by
reference to possible applications and these cannot be surveyed by a process of pointing. Whatever
is merely pointed out or manipulated can be classified in an indefinite variety of ways, and a condition
of understanding a certain classification is that one know just what is encompassed by it. To know
the meaning, or conventional application, of an expression "K" we must accordingly have a grasp
of the criteria for being a K, for it is only with reference to these criteria that we could possibly
delimit the variety of things that, should they exist or come to our attention, would be correctly
classifiable as K's. Since these criteria cannot possibly be given by a mere gesture of pointing,
it is clear that a so-called ostensive definition is a misnomer. The most that ostension
can do is direct our attention to a vaguely delimited region of space and time; if we are to
understand what what is being pointed out, we must understand the relevant principles of
classification.

Although these remarks make it plain that pointing is in no way sufficient to establish the meaning
of any term, it might nevertheless be thought that it is necessary for the purpose of learning
certain words. This view has at any rate been expressed by philosophers who attempt to draw
philosphical conclusions about meaning from their conception of how a child might be taught certain words. The idea here is, however,
false; there are no words whose meaning can be taught only with the aid of pointing gestures.
As already indicated, the most that pointing can do is direct one's attention to a vaguely defined
region of space, [I speak of a "vaguely defined region of space" because a mere gesture of pointing does not pick
out a circumscribed thing or region. In pointing at a man I may be interpreted as pointing at his
head, his eye, his pupil or eyelash, or even to the spatial area through which his head is
moving.] and this can be accomplished by verbal signals just as well. The
gesture of pointing is in no sense easier to understand than familiar verbal directions such as
"Over there!"

It is important to observe in this connection that a child's first words are not really taught.
As every parent knows, such words are learned "naturally" in a way that seems wholly mysterious.
It may be granted that when a child is old enough to benefit from his parent's untutored
and clumsy attempts to teach him words, he can best learn such nouns as "ball" when the appropriate
things are in his view. But a gesture of pointing has no special utility in the learning situation.
If a child hears the word "ball" when he is playing with one, his attention will already be directed
to the appropriate object, and a gesture of pointing would only distract it. The actual
process of learning language is really far more complicated than philosophers seem to think; and
those who believe that the gesture of pointing has some special utility for language-learning
should note that psychologists hardly ever mention pointing when discussing the subject
of how people learn words. [If a gesture of pointing is understood as a linguistic act, comparable in significance to, say,
"Look at that!," it would be considered a "mand" by the psychologist B. F. Skinner. Yet
in Skinner's discussion of learning in his Verbal Behavior (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,
1957), Ch. 3, pointing is never even mentioned. In his view words are learned by progressive
reinforcement of appropriate "operant" behavior.]
Pointing is neither necessary nor sufficient for learning
language, and the private thinker's inability to rely on gestures of pointing is thus of no
significance at all.

This reference to language-learning prompts a further comment. It might be thought that the
inability of an alleged private thinker to be be taught his language by some other agent shows that
the idea of his actually having a language is senseless. But this view is clearly false,
because it is certainly possible, logically, for a child to be
born with the ability to speak his parent's language.20 Of course, if such a child
does indeed possess a language at the hour of his birth, he must then be able to apply its terms
correctly and consistently. In ordinary life this is something that we would determine by observing
the child's verbal behavior. In the present case this is admittedly ruled out. Here we are
concerned with the possibility of a phenomenal language, the correctness and consistency of whose
use can be determined only by phenomenal considerations. They are the only legitimate considerations
because, as already shown, the question whether a particular expression is correctly applied
can be determined only by reference to criteria internal to the language in point. For the
private thinker, these criteria are phenomenal, not public; and it would thus be logically
inappropriate to demant that his phenomenal claims be assessed by criteria of any other kind.

7. A BASIC PUZZLE ABOUT SEMANTIC REGULARITIES

The argument of the last section was built around one basic question: How, ultimately, can one ever
justify the contention that the concepts of a given conceptual system are in fact consistently
applied to the same kind of object? The topic of ostension was introduced because it is difficult
to see how a justification of this sort could possibly be given by a mere appeal to intra-language
rules. If, in order to assure oneself that "A" is correctly applied to X, one could only appeal
to such rules as "Anything having an identifying feature B may be properly called
'an A,'" then one would have to know that X is in fact the feature B, which means that "B"
properly applies to it. But if there is a general doubt about whether the conceptual
system in point is correctly and consistently applied, then an appeal to this kind of rule is
question begging, for the doubt about the application of "A" accrues also to the application
of "B." Hence, if we are to take seriously a general doubt of this kind, it would seem that we must
ultimately make an appeal to extra-conceptual considerations, perhaps to immediate awareness,
pointing or something similar.

Having argued that any question whether a given concept is
correctly and consistently applied to the same kind of object can be answered only by reference
to the criteria distinctive of that kind of thing. I am obviously committed to reject any
extra-conceptual meaning of ruling out such a doubt. But this does not mean that I am committed
to take a general doubt of this sort seriously. On the contrary, if the preceding argument is
sound, such general doubts are completely idle, baseless, and logically capable of casting
any real suspicion on anything at all.

To see this, note that any serious doubt requires some kind of basis. In involving the claim
that some aligned matter of fact is indeed doubtful, a justification is obviously in order.
This justification can actually be given, however, only within the framework of some
conceptual system. Consequently, if a man has only one conceptual system, one "language,"
he will not be able to formulate a serious doubt about the correct application of that system
as a whole - for he would have to use the system in order both to formulate his doubt and
to establish a justification for it. This does not mean that he will be unable to question
the propriety of particular claims that are made in its terms, or even to revise large segments of
the system while hanging by his bootstraps to the part that remains. But a general doubt about
the correct and consistent application of his system as a whole will not be open to him - and
this will be true of the private thinker too, if he has only one conceptual scheme with which to
work.

In might be thought, however, that such general doubts could justifiably be made within the framework
of some other conceptual system. Wittgenstein at any rate purported to do just this when
he attacked the possibility of private languages. And on the face of it at least, an external
attack of this sort seems entirely reasonable. Suppose, for example, that members of a native
tribe were observed to apply a given expression to a very large, highly disconnected group
of objects - to things that we could call "cows," "trees," "rocks," "manure," and so on.
Would not this scattered sort of application show that their expression was not consistently
applied? The answer, of course, is "No." To appreciate this answer, we have only to consider
more closely the question at issue: Are certain expressions consistently applied to the same
kind of objects? The crucial word here is "kind," for kinds are determined only with reference
to some conceptual scheme. And while it may be true
that the expression in point is not consistently applied to anything that we, or indeed any other
civilized person, would regard as a single kind, this may not be true for the natives. In fact
there is no theoretical limit to the variety of ways in which they may happen to carve reality.

Admittedly, if we knew something about the general structure of the natives' language, or even about
their chief interests and beliefs, [The relevance of both interests and beliefs in this connection can be illustrated by reference to the word "carbon." A man with suitable interests might apply this word to
precious diamonds, industrial diamonds (which may appear to be gravel), and ordinary
chimney soot.] the number of these alternatives could perhaps be
cut down to manageable size. But we would in any case have to determine the extension of the terms
they use by reference to the ways they use them; and to the extent that their usage is
puzzling, or seemingly inconsistent when measured by our way of viewing things, their conception
of things is simply beyond our ken - which means that we are yet in no position to say whether they
consistently apply their terms to what they consider the same kind of thing. In order to settle
doubts about the semantic regularities involved in their verbal behavior, we must in fact
approach the question from within, by learning their language and solving our problem by an
appeal to the considerations they themselves invoke in appraising the success of their own verbal
performances. Only in this way is it possible to discover whether they conceive it, and whether
our language even has the resources to permit a definition of the kinds of thing to which
many of their crucial terms apply.21

If a wholly general doubt about semantic regularity cannot legitimately be raised within the
framework of the system to which it applies, and any other doubt raised within the framework
of some other conceptual system is similarly self-stultifying - in that any specification of the
kind of thing to which the terms in question are supposed to apply must be justified with reference
to what are considered the semantical regularities governing their use - it then follows that a
general doubt about the consistent application of an entire language cannot possibly be justified.
Such a doubt must remain absolutely idle pointless, with no possibility whatever of
gaining empirical support. Since a doubt of this kind is no less idle when directed to
phenomenal languages, we must conclude that an external attack on such languages cannot
succeed. This, however, seems to be the approach Wittgenstein took in attacking them.

Granting that general doubts about whether a phenomenal thinker does "as a rule" apply
his terms consistently are, in this way, illegitimate, one might nevertheless insist
that the foregoing argument renders particular doubts both unavoidable and irresoluble. If there
is indeed no ultimate foundation of empirical knowledge, will not any attempt to answer a
particular doubt inexorably lead to an infinite regress? As before, the answer to this
question must be "No." While it is assuredly possible to raise doubt after doubt, any particular
doubt that is worth heeding must be justifiable, which means that it, too, must be supported by
contentions that are themselves subject to challenge and, potentially at least, in need of
justification. I say "potentially at least in need of justification. I say "potentially in need
of justification" because if we could never take something as not requiring justification
for the moment, no doubts and no contentions could ever reasonably be advanced. Justification
must therefore, as Wittgenstein said, come to an end somewhere -- if only for the time being.
True, we can in principle challenge the credentials advanced in favor of any bona fide
contention. But in doing so we must base our challenge on reasonable considerations and we must
be willing to waive our doubts in the face of appropriate evidence. The idea that a justification
may be self-justifying is nothing more than favorable results from the tests he is willing to make
in support of some contention on which he bases his confidence. If he is sufficiently critical,
sufficiently suspicious of dogma in all its guises, he can scarcely be accused of intellectual
levity or gullibility.

8. PHENOMENAL LANGUAGES AGAIN

The question that led to the foregoing discussion was whether a solitary thinker might in fact
be consistent in applying basic phenomenal terms to elements of his immediate experience. [See p. 47.]
So far, I
have argued that any positive reason for doubting the consistency of such a practice cannot, by
the very nature of the case, be formulated. The question arises, however, whether the idea of
semantical regularities in a wholly phenomenal language actually makes sense. I think that it
does. If, in line with the anti-behaviorist assumptions on which we have been operating
since Chapter 1, one is prepared to grant that one's own feelings and sense impressions are
covert occurrences or states, then the suggestion that one might attempt to identify them in thought
by devising a special language for them does not appear to be incomprehensible, nor does it seem
unlikely that the judgments of identification one might proceed to make in the new idiom would
consistently correspond to the appropriate phenomenal occurrences. If one is prepared to admit,
moreover, that other people also have covert feelings and sense impressions, and are also
capable of silent thought, then it should not be excessively difficult to imagine another person
employing such a language either.

Is is not necessary, after all, that these phenomenal occurrences be intrinsically private in the sense
that no one but the private thinker could conceivably know that they occurred or existed.
Although Wittgenstein apparently did attack the intelligibility of utterly private objects [It is important to recall that I am presently concerned with the question whether Wittgenstein's
arguments refuses the view outlined at the end of Ch. 1 (see pp. 24-29). Whether his argument
succeeds against the view he actually had in mind, which I take to be a form of logical
atomism (see p. 67, footnote), is a very different question, not at issue here. Many philosophers
apparently think that this argument rules out any kind of basic phenomenal language, and
it is this opinion that I wish to refute here.]
there is nothing in the contentions of the solitary thinker presently in question that would commit
him to the existence of these peculiar things. Not only does his skimpy, basic conceptual apparatus
lack the resources necessary to speak of other persons, but when it is enriched by nonphenomenal
terms, so that discourse about selves and a public time and space can be carried out within it, he
will endeavor to show that other persons can understand him when he speaks - in that language -
of the feelings, thoughts, and sense impressions that he happens to have. Hence, since there is no
initial presumption that the phenomenal items in question are intrinsically private in some profound
epistemological sense, only a radical behaviorist should have special difficulty in understanding the idea that a practice of applying phenomenal terms might in fact
be quite consistent.

It should be observed in this connection that even if, as is often claimed, we ordinary
describe our experience in relation to patterns of behavior with which it is correlated, it does
not follow that no other mode of describing our experience is possible. Thus, while itches
are commonly distinguished from other feelings partly by reference to their tendency to bring about
scratching, it is not inconceivable that a solitary thinker might classify those of his feelings
that happen to be itches in a less indirect way. If the phenomenal theorist's strategy of enriching
his basic language were accomplished in any significant degree, he might in fact reach the
point of identifying the referent of one of his phenomenal terms "A" with what he later
learns to call "an itch that I feel." The identity-statement he may later affirm
"A's are itches that I feel," would of course be a contingent one, since "A's, unlike
itches, are not definitionally tied to the tendency to scratch. But the merely contingent
character of this statement will not prevent us from saying that the items he initially
identifies as A's may be nothing more mysterious than what we might call "itches that he
feels."

If the idea of identifying what are in fact one's sensory experiences in a special language
so meagerly constructed as to have no room for describing persons or public objects does make sense
and if, further, no serious doubt about the consistent use of such a language can legitimately
be raised, it seems clear that the phenomenal theorist's claim to a primitive phenomenal
language cannot be dismissed on a priori grounds. This means that his initial
steps toward constructing the position described in the last chapter eludes the kind of objection
we have been considering. It may be that this initial step leads into a blind alley, but the
step itself seems entirely coherent. It is not absurd in principle.

9. SOME LIMITATIONS OF PHENOMENAL LANGUAGES

Although the Wittgensteinian arguments sketched in this chapter do not abolish the possibility
of all phenomenal languages, my discussion of them has disclosed two points that should
minimize the
attractiveness of any appeal to subjective experience as the basis of all empirical
knowledge. The first is that subjective experience cannot really provide the logically
unshakable foundation of knowledge that empiricists have traditionally sought. In fact the
very idea that there can be an ultimate foundation for knowledge has been thoroughly
undermined. As I have argued at length, any empirical claim, phenomenal or not, is
subject to possible correction by other claims. This means that although we may
justifiably advance claims that concern nothing more than the momentary
character of our immediate experience, we have not thereby reached the bedrock
of unalterably certain knowledge that empiricists have tried to find in their subjective
experience.

The second point disclosed by the foregoing discussion is perhaps more exciting:
phenomenal claims are not intrinsically more reliable than claims of other kinds, such as
those concerning persons and physical objects. Thus, as I have shown by describing a number of
psychological experiments, it is quite possible for a person's introspective claims to be
flatly erroneous. Not only might one be deficient in conceptual ability, but one might
be drugged, dazed, insane, or hypnotized. In order to rule out such contingencies,
one must have some way of defending the reliability of one's introspective claims. This is most
easily done if an appeal to others is taken seriously: their corroboration of my claims
adds significant credibility to them. Of course, the fact that their corroborative remarks are
likely to be true is itself open to doubt. But to doubt it justifiably one must have some
reason to think it perhaps false. To have this reason is obviously to have access
to a far wider range of considerations than is available to one whose theorizing is carried
out wholly in a phenomenal language. Yet this wider range of considerations in no way lessens
one's chances of finding the truth. On the contrary, as I shall argue in subsequent chapters,
the wider the range of considerations to which one can appeal, the sounder one's
opinions are likely to be.

My view on this matter is almost the opposite to that of traditional empiricists. For them,
the accuracy of a man's outlook varied inversely to its scope: the more it encompassed,
the more it risked; and the more it risked, the less reliable it was. I prefer to argue that
the possibility of error is not the same as the likelihood of error, and that in demonstrating
error one is also demonstrating truth.

If you can show that a statement is false, or likely to be false, you have thereby shown that
its negation is true or likely to be true. Hence for me any theory that increases the possibility
of demonstrating error is far preferable to one that minimizes this possibility. As every
gambler knows, when the stakes are low, so are the winnings. 22